Drop out! – Invite to come to Greenford…

Just come out of the educational bubble and struggling with post-grad depression?

Fed up with your mindless existence trapped in the monkey rat-race?

Sick of the job centre being on your case, demanding you become a wage slave?

Caught in the headlights staring at a meaningless future of alcohol, coffee and facebook..?!

If any of these descriptions apply to you, then why not move to the badlands of west-London, uncontaminated by the hipster-beard-menace of gentrified London, and organise in a warehouse or food factory with comrades?

Most jobs are shit so why not make a decision to get a shit job with us in a sector that brings together lots of different workers – in a warehouse, an area, across global supply chains – where potential unrest could throw a spanner in the works of London’s capitalist machine?

We are doing a workers enquiry. In a nutshell, this means firstly, learning on the job: finding out how this whole warehouse sector is working, who these mainly migrant working class are, what would be needed to break down divisions amongst the workers and then, if possible, INTERVENE! The whole point of enquiry is not just doing some sociological research. We use what we find out to hit the bosses where it hurts and try and build some working class collectivity. There are no short cuts. It can be a hard slog, but with like-minded people and mutual support, it can be interesting and worthwhile.

What would it involve?

We could help you find a job and a place to rent. There are food production units, supermarket warehouses, bigger and smaller distribution centres, there are jobs that require no experience at all, jobs that require a forklift licence, office jobs, driver jobs…of course, most of our CVs are a total lie and they usually don’t check references so we can help get your CV up to scratch.

We’d meet up regularly and discuss what the job is like, how things are organised, what our co-workers are like and the potentials for organising with them against the minimum wages, zero-hours contracts, bullying and regular rip-offs of proletarian existence in the wild west…

We are experimenting! If a strike isn’t possible, what about a slow down? Or sabotage? How could we work up to a blockade? How do we bridge the gap between permanent and temp workers? How do we overcome separations between different language groups? How can we build up our local solidarity network and get more of our workmates involved? Creative ideas and discussion are welcome!

All we know is, things can’t get much worse and situations that seem impossible can quickly change when workers put their heads together and some kind of dynamic gets going. This will take more than the few of us who are currently involved, that’s why we’re writing this open invitation…

We also publish an irregular workers newspaper, WorkersWildWest. Together we’d write articles and distribute the paper, which is an attempt to share experiences from workers in warehouses in the area e.g. what they’ve tried to resist the bosses, what worked and what didn’t.

And we want to start having regular meetings where local workers can meet up to discuss their situation or if they want help in trying to organise at work.

What we are and aren’t…

We don’t have the illusion that things will kick off immediately and there will be a general warehouse strike and riots overnight! We’re in it for the longish haul but if you want to just come for a while and see how it goes, that’s cool. But we’d obviously prefer to meet people with a sense of commitment, so 6 months to a year is a good time to get stuck in and see what’s what.

We aren’t a pool of knowledge for people writing their phd’s!

We have a libertarian communist politics, and we don’t see ourselves as outside the working class. We are workers, too. So if we want to try and change things we do so not from the position of ‘external agitators’, or union organisers, or politicos who want to build the vanguard party. But as workers looking for some way to bridge our revolutionary desire with practical efforts.

If you’re interested, get in touch and we can meet up for a drink to chat through things in more detail so you can make up your mind. We are in zone 4 on the central line. It’s probably a good idea to read some stuff of ours beforehand to get a better sense of where we’re coming from.

And if all of that sounds a bit too much but you still want to get involved, we always need help distributing newspapers when shifts start and finish so if you live nearby or have some free time (we can also put you up the night before) get in touch!